Light up the sky like a flame? Well sure. Sure you can. You got the goods, you can have the fame.

Thing is, this is Ireland. And GAA fame isn't like other kinds of fame.

This week two years ago, Colm Cooper was putting down the days in the run-up to his second All Ireland final. He was 21 years old, long and thin and red-headed like a kitchen match.

Maybe a bit too slight for the suit he wore every day to work in the AIB in Killarney but nobody cared in the least about that. Ever since forever, all anyone at home has wanted from him is to be fit for Sunday. This Sunday, any Sunday, every Sunday.

Anyway, one of the days a nice little old lady came to the top of the queue. He can't rightly remember now what bit of business had her there but whatever it was, she got chatting away while he attended to her. "Will you be heading to the match on Sunday?" she asked him innocently. GAA fame. They don't always remember your name.

"A few of the lads working beside me kind of giggled a bit, " says Cooper, "and I heard them but I didn't want to make her feel bad or whatever so I just played along and said "Yerra, I suppose I'll head away up that direction alright."

And she goes, "Will you go on Saturday or Sunday?" So I told her I'd probably go the Saturday and make a weekend of it. The lads beside me were in stitches by this stage and then when she started naming out the Kerry players she liked she said, 'Well I'd love to see the two Killarney boys play well anyway, Brosnan and Cooper. They're fine players the pair of them.'

"Ah, it was funny now. I kept plamasing the lady but it was hard to keep a straight face because nearly all the staff were listening at this stage and they were nearly doubled over laughing and there was a few in the queue as well who could hear what was going on. She came back a week later . . . I suppose she was after watching the match on the TV or whatever . . . and she was mortified."

The story is recalled as much for its rarity as its levity. Since arriving as if in a storkflown basket left on the national doorstep in the summer of 2002, the occasions where the flash of his face hasn't brought his name to the tip of the tongue can be counted in the centimetres of flab around his midriff. Even now, the first face you see when you arrive at the train station is his, the main entrance having been window-painted with his likeness. Cooper has been famous since he carried a schoolbag and though it's always been the nice kind of fame . . . the back-slap and handshake and bearhug-of-praise kind . . . it's taken a bit of getting used to.

"The first year passed me by in a bit of a blur, " he says. "Everything was new to me and so I just kind of went with it and it was fine. And by the end of that year, I was kind of used to the attention. Since then, it's stayed at a high level and there's times when you don't mind it at all.

It's great that people want to talk to you and be nice to you and that's mostly what it is. It's very rare that anyone wants to have a go at you.

"But I do know that every once in a while, you have to take a step back otherwise you'd go mad. You need your space, your own time to reflect. You can't be in good form all the time and there's definitely times when things mightn't be going so well for you and you'd just like to keep yourself to yourself."

This afternoon, he'll face the flag for his fourth final. Five seasons, four finals and three All Stars is some haul for a 23-year-old. But even if today brings a repeat of the man-of-thematch performance of two years ago, it will hardly be enough for him to add to the third of those totals this year. Not that it matters even a little bit. This has been a year for keeping himself to himself. All the awards in the world won't change what he'll remember it for.

Just as his is the first face you see coming out of the train station, the first pub you come to on your way into the town centre is Jimmy O'Brien's, as GAA a local as you'd ever set foot in. Up on the wall, behind a simple wooden picture frame, is a tribute to Mike Cooper.

Colm is the youngest of the seven children the 61-year-old Mike left behind when he died of a heart attack on the first Monday morning of April.

His death fell out of the clear blue sky. Nobody phoned in a warning, nobody gave them time to brace themselves. It happened in a finger-snap. He went to watch the Crokes play Rathmore on the Sunday night and laughed away and talked football with whoever was about but before lunch the next day he was gone. You can write the word 'suddenly' and put it in the paper but until you say goodnight to your father on Sunday night and shoulder his coffin on Wednesday morning, you haven't a clue what it means. Five months on, you don't need to peel back the bandages in order to get a look at the wounds.

"He was a massive part of my life and all of our lives at home. The shock of it initially was the worst thing to come to terms with. It was just so sudden how it happened. On the Sunday, we'd had a league game with the club and we were together that night and there wasn't a bother on him. And then the next day he was gone. It's tough to take, you know? Hard to understand."

Hard for the family, impossible for anyone else. To the outside world, Mike Cooper was the Gooch's dad. To the people who only know the piece of his youngest son that shines from the confines of a lined football pitch, he was an outline drawing. When he died, they said his two great passions in life were his family and the GAA and the story was told of the 2002 championship match in which the Crokes lined out against South Kerry with all five of his sons in the team and the pride he felt watching from the sideline. But as well-intentioned and true as those words are, they're just the words of outsiders, ultimately pat and meaningless. It's too soon to say even now how Colm Cooper has dealt with the loss of his father. No point even trying.

What he had to face up to in the week that followed was the fact that Kerry were playing Dublin in a league game on the weekend. Right up to the Friday night, he believed he wouldn't play. He hadn't slept much, hadn't eaten much, hadn't thought much. Figured he'd give it a skip.

"I was just so drained physically and mentally and I felt that I wouldn't be any asset to the team at all if I played. Because it was a big game and we needed at least a draw out of it to make the league semi-final. But on the Friday night, talking to the family at home, my mother just said, 'Look, it's up to you, but there's no doubt that Dad would have really wanted you to play.' And I knew she was right so I went along and togged out and came on with 15 minutes or something left. We got the draw in the end."

What he doesn't add, of course, is that in those 15 minutes, he scored a point and set up another for Ronan O'Connor to secure the draw Kerry needed.

In the weeks and months that followed, he faced into something that hadn't happened to him before. His form went. Just dropped off the chart, disappeared like a coin down the back of the sofa. It was a little scary, actually, because initially he didn't know the why or the wherefore or what. Not that he wasn't well-versed in the theories of others.

"People would have been saying that my form dipped because my head wasn't right since my father died and I can see how it could look that way from the outside. But to be honest, nobody knew how I felt or what was in my head except me. And I'd actually look at it another way. I had been playing constantly for five years without any sort of break or let-up.

That's January to Christmas every year because luckily enough the club have been doing alright these past few years as well. I'm only 23 so there was a few of those years where there was lots of under-21 football too."

This Sunday, any Sunday, every Sunday.

"When my form started to go. I sat down and tried to work out why it was happening and I worked out that this was bound to happen sooner or later. Now, maybe the emotion of dealing with Dad's death was a tipping point or maybe it just added to it but I think at the root of it was definitely the amount of football I'd played over the space of five years. It all caught up with me and something had to give. I know around that time, my immune system started giving out on me as well so my body was obviously trying to tell me something or other."

Solving the problem wasn't easy and he's still not wholly satisfied that he's managed it yet.

The things he'd been doing since he was a kid suddenly didn't just happen any more. And it was like a particularly stubborn knot . . . the harder he pulled at it, the worse it got.

"I didn't change anything. I was training away and putting in the work as best I could and maybe there was few weeks there that I was trying too hard. But it's just one of those mysteries, you know? I remember the day of the Munster final replay in Pairc Ui Chaoimh and I was marking [Graham] Canty that day and he's a fine, fine player but I knew I was doing alright on him. I was getting out in front and I was winning ball but for some reason I just could not shoot straight. I think there were eight chances I had and normally I would be disappointed if I didn't score six out of the eight.

"But I couldn't kick even one. I was like a golfer who was doing everything right but couldn't hole any putts. And I know that after the fifth or sixth one, I was just trying too hard. I've always known that when I'm playing well, it just happens for me. Doesn't matter if I'm training above in the stadium or playing in Croke Park with Kerry, I normally just try to loosen myself up, get the ball, turn and float it over the bar. But it wasn't happening that day."

Nobody took him by the ear and there was never a prospect of a spell in the dugout.

Instead, they made him captain, told him they trusted him and ordered him to trust himself.

Kieran Donaghy came along and took over the responsibility for being the star of the summer . . . so much so that now, somehow, the most naturally-gifted footballer in the land goes into his fourth All Ireland final almost unnoticed.

Not that he cares. He was never in it for the fame anyway.

mclerkin@tribune. ie